Forget about spending money to buy NetNanny, Cyber Patrol, SurfWatch, CYBERsitter or any other similar censorware to block inappropriate pornographic websites and to protecting you from phishing websites.

I am going to show you how easy it is to protect your kids from all this inappropriate websites for free by just a few simple configuration! Not only it is able to block websites, it is able to make your network safer, faster, smarter and more reliable.

Find it hard to believe? You’ll never know unless you try it yourself.

You might have heard of OpenDNS by now. If you haven’t, OpenDNS is a safer, faster, smarter and more reliable way to navigate the Internet. OpenDNS service is free and requires nothing to download. DNS stands for Domain Name System. Whether you realize it or not, you use the DNS every time you use the Internet for the web, email, and more. You want DNS to be blazing fast. OpenDNS is so fast because they run some of the largest DNS caches around and do it on their own high-performance network.

Just by changing my DNS settings in my router, websites show up a few seconds faster than my ISP DNS servers. OpenDNS is able to help you save time on resolving domain names to IP addresses. Do take note that it will NOT speed up your download speed. Here’s a complete guide on how to change your DNS server.

OpenDNS is able to block Adult websites, Phishing websites and also custom domain. You can trust OpenDNS to block porn sites because they’ve teamed up with St. Bernard Software (a leader in internet filtering). St. Bernard’s iGuard service is the only 100% human-reviewed system of its kind with millions of sites categorized and reviewed. To be able to configure OpenDNS to block adult websites, you need to sign up for a free account on OpenDNS.

Once you’ve signed up for a free OpenDNS account, log in and go to Networks tab.
OpenDNS Settings
By default your IP address is already being detected by OpenDNS. You only need to add a label for the IP address. If it’s for your office, just enter Office and click ADD THIS NETWORK button.

If your office has a static IP address, the next thing you need to do is go to Settings tab to configure filtering. You can block adult sites, phishing sites and custom domain name.
OpenDNS Adult Site Blocking
If OpenDNS mistakenly blocked sites that you visit frequently, just use Whitelist. A whitelist is a list of domains that will never be blocked on your network regardless of the content filtering categories you’ve turned on.

If you have dynamic IP address, there is an extra step you need to go through. Whenever your connection got disconnected and got a new IP address, you’ll need to inform OpenDNS that your IP has changed. Here’s what you need to do.

1. Log in to your OpenDNS account.
2. You should be at SETTINGS tab. If not, click the SETTINGS tab and on the left hand bar, click “Set Up a Dynamic IP”
3. CHECK Enable dynamic IP update and click Apply button.
Setup OpenDNS Dynamic IP
4. Register a free DNS-O-Matic account.
5. Login to DNS-O-Matic.
6. Click the drop down menu and select OpenDNS from the list. You should see the status “Waiting for first update“.
Waiting for first update
7. Download DNS-O-Matic Updater
8. Extract and run DNSoMaticupdate.exe
9. Enter your DNS-O-Matic username and password and click Refresh. DNS-O-Matic Updater will be minimized to your tray bar. Right click on the O icon and select “Enable Autostart”
DNS O Matic Updater Configuration

DNS-O-Matic Updater will automatically start whenever Windows is booted up. When I was testing DNS-O-Matic Updater, I found out that it will check your IP address every 10 minutes. If the updater program detected new IP address, it will inform DNS-O-Matic and DNS-O-Matic will OpenDNS. You will see a balloon notification saying “Update process was successful, and your network preferences are applied.”
DNS update successful

What a great service offered by OpenDNS. It can definitely help a lot of companies save money on expensive web filtering and security software.


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